


the city is war-torn and nearly impassable

by londondungeon2 (orphan_account)



Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, First Kiss, M/M, The ResultsTM of being stuck in quarantine with twinkies and insomnia, Timeline Ambiguous, separation au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23283277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/londondungeon2
Summary: Hypothesis: Jekyll struggles with how much of Hyde’s identity belongs to him, if any.
Relationships: Edward Hyde/Dr. Henry Jekyll
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70





	the city is war-torn and nearly impassable

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bittersweet Potions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12916821) by [moon_hedgehog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_hedgehog/pseuds/moon_hedgehog). 



Golf balls of a curved spine bathing in moonlight, Henry Jekyll gingerly paints the canopy of a tiny closed umbrella made of birch wood. Coated bristles drag lines of mauve pigment down frills. Cautiously, he deposits the petite brush on a speckled handkerchief before effacing blue and red oil into his stained brow. With pursed lips, Jekyll blows until paint dries. 

A rod of static emits from Henry’s back, as he stretches to ebb the stress of work. He removes bulky goggles from a face besmirched by greasy art. Two grim hands rub at his eyes. Nacreous starlight half-hidden by polluting buildings drowns over him and the pit of an intimate moon's ivory intestines spill over his office; these and more than these caked over by night. With a sigh, he unconsciously turns - just to rest tired eyes that have been squinting at elfin details for hours. Rubies gaze upon the diamond moon and, sudden, Jekyll’s body lunches. 

Whiplashing, he recoils away from the soporific sight. The notion that his simple glance might have sparked _‘him’_ sank to the bottom of his stomach, already germinating. Hands sweating, he slips back on his goggles.

Jekyll sought to return to his immediate work. A second microscope lens drops in front of his left iris with one click. Shadows fold over the facsimile of London Underground, following the fingers that twitch over his creation. Lifting the dry umbrella with his ring and pinkie, he places it in the awaiting glue of a lady’s hands. Each motion requires precision. With a nail, he depresses the umbrella and starts to adjust the woman’s arm. 

“The moon looked ravishing tonight, Doc.” The ulna snaps off. 

Jekyll - silent - stares at the brittle forearm that is nestling between his fingerprints. He bites his lips in a taut line. The bone is settled down on fake cement ground. “Her siren song was most sublime.” Retreating from his model, lips go white between enamels and nails dig into wood. “Why refuse such a gorgeous thing? Night will surely be lonely; how ungentlemanly of us, Jekyll.”

 _Leave me be, Hyde_. He seethes, nausea sitting like stew in his stomach. Talking to him is like standing on a precarious rock flowing in an ebony river. Together, they are sandwiched between the streams of humane duality. Jekyll - who’s feet carry him away from the Underground to the eldritch window which looms like a catholic cross, hands crossed between his spine - feels like he has two skeletons inside him. Marrowbone slides over marrowbone like tectonic plates crashing under fragile skin. It is painful keeping himself alive.

Henry Jekyll stares at the phantom skeleton in the window’s reflection. Edward Hyde is composed of the color of September, black blood that shines a citrus orange, and the wanton smell of London ashes. Inside his springline window, the vicious spirit drapes himself upon the ebony legs of a reflective box. Most of Hyde’s life has been restrained to glass and shadow, thin echoes of proved reality.

“Come on, Doc. You yearn for it as much as I.” From his spot in veils of dim crystal, Hyde folds rawboned fingers over his lungs and leans into the corner of wooden slits. Moonlit reflects off his crescent leer. “And, we have waited so patiently for it too, through a whole week of lectures and documents and _them_. They’ve chained us up here - Lanyon, Utterson, Poole. All of them kept us in a cage, to fork away our sanity. Just one night. One! That is all I need, all that we need.”

Jekyll pushes his forehead against his cage, enough to emit a tiny crackle. However, eyes and hands pinch close to avoid looking or grasping for the nightly tempts of London stars. As frigid moonlight paints his scorching bones, Jekyll responses over a bitter tongue. “Edward -- do not remind me of time’s insidious march, I am not blind to it. I know a week has passed, but - God, the repercussions - you have no rein over how much is too much. As soon as I let you out, you succumb to the lust and greed of night. Another relapse and we would be thrown into asylum”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You cannot separate us as if our motives are linked; _we_ succumb to the lust and greed of night; _we_ have no rein over how much is too much! As much as you deny it, I am closer to you than anyone else will ever be. Never single me out again - like I am a mere acquaintance” If Jekyll had opened his crimson eyes, he would have unearthed Hyde’s anguish in his expression, the slight tweak of wheat eyebrows as if those words were betrayal. Rather, he keeps his eyes close. Vexation untwines in Hyde.

A wisp of nebulous green smoke that nearly forms the shape of a corporeal hand seizes Jekyll’s face between it’s talons. Though it is only muscle movement from his shared mind, the fierce grip on his face mimics tangible warmth. A centipede of awe skitters down Jekyll’s spine. Two insectile fingers prick skin over and under his right eye. Hyde wrenches it open. A dot of black and red blood stares and quivers. Before him stands the ominous pale cabinet like a monolith; before him are doors concealing stagnant, sinister vials of red liquid that shine a rotten ebony under autumn light, nestled in iron racks; before him is all the freedom he - Jekyll - yearns for.

“One drink - even a sip will suffice. Just one night without the shackles they keep us in. The Society will continue without its bitch to slave over paperwork and donations. We are wound up like a spring, Doc. You don’t want us to destroy ourselves, then let us destroy something else.” The voice is hannibal nectar, a sweetness that rushes in like an europhia worm. Jekyll’s other eye opens voluntarily. He barely notices the gradual steps forward until the glacial knob collides with his fingers. He reels back, turning away as some hidden hatred glows in him.

“I can’t, Hyde. Not with the state of the Society now, not with your last scandal staining our name, not tonight.” Before Hyde can ask that repeating question, Jekyll murmurs “, And I don't know _when_ I can again.”

Hyde flares, that kindled anger compressed in him like a blood clot. Deliberately, his lips stretching in wax motions form a snarl. “You’ve been hiding something from me, Henry. I don't understand how it is possible, my memories are starting to fog. I just know you are hiding something.” Eyes are narrow, clicking incisions of green distrust. It is the most cagey Hyde has ever been, trapped in a springline mirror and rotting brain. Then, before Jekyll can plead for three useless days to pass in the insidious promenade, Hyde speaks his worst fear and spends his nemesis into a loathing panic. “You’re planning to kill me, aren’t you?”

“I would never!”

Jekyll’s third replica of London Underground explodes. A scattering shower of wood clicks and warbling notes rain down. The metro’s windows and figurine heads burst like spectral bulbs. A tiny Jekyll and a tiny Hyde clatter on the ground, bouncing in opposite directions. Across the discord, they stand in the cold space between two entirely different worlds. 

_Hypothesis: sometimes love makes people do witless things._

With a face of skin that languishes like a winter flower, Jekyll offers the pique reflection a sorry smile. “You wouldn’t understand - we are separate.” Then he leaves, alone.

†

The sun emerges over the horizon - consistent like clockwork. Polar twins of light rise like balloons to indicate the hours. Time marches in a funeral parade, controlled between two fierce dualities. Henry Jekyll foolishly thought he could separate all dualities at their clear seams, only to have a vehement blonde prove years of studies incorrect. 

To be frank, he yet to unearth the awful edges where Jekyll ended and Hyde began. They eroded in each other. If his first hypothesis, back in the rented lab he shared with an addict and rat-traps, was correct then they were the same coin yet on different sides. That is how it should have been. Despite the melted ether that they evanesce into, Jekyll _knows_ without scientific grounding that he differs from his creation. He has two skeletons, one is not his own. Hyde, from his birth, thrives off knowing he is only a suppressed part of respectable Henry Jekyll. London’s spirit is blind to knowing he has created himself an identity, fading out of their violet. On his third day alive, he gave himself a name. And, Jekyll - though it is unspoken - worships Hyde for that. Hyde is not a parasite, rather a predator.

And Jekyll? Oh, how he struggles with his identity.

Sudden, a knock boots Henry out of irksome thoughts. With a sharp flince, he realizes he has been clenching his nemesis’s replica in midst of cleaning his study and mind. He quickly hides the tiny Edward Hyde - propels it into an open drawer with autumn papers and bitten ballpoint pens. Too sudden, the door opens after.

Robert Lanyon, who has a radio set permanent on jazz and laughs like white sugar, is standing on the threshold with papers clutched to his torso. With a sheepish smile, he waves up the hand with documents. His lips jerk with pompous words yet still, coffee eyes surveying the disarray. As a sigh dissolves out of him, Robert murmurs “, another rough night?”

Henry smiles, eyes full of rue glancing around at the structure that peppers his study. He steps forward and away. A tiny wooden Jekyll abrades against mahogany flooring under his sole. “It was just another migraine. I wrote another letter to my pharmacist; the pills will be delivered soon.”

Robert does not bother to mention that most people with migraine typically do not have nightly outbursts causing them to stomp apart metro models, most people aren’t Henry Jekyll. So, as he watches the stubborn rogue scientist place a small-scale version of himself near a neglected glass of water that ages with dust, Robert falls upon the saccharine role as Henry’s therapist. 

“Henry,” brown eyes glance timorously at the documents in hands. “Henry, I worry for you. There are nights where paranoia over whether you’ll be breathing tomorrow snatches me. I know, you’ll dismiss these moments of poor mental health as migraines or insomnia - something for pills to cure. But, Henry, I think the problem is rooted deeper than that. I am almost certain of my hypothesis. This past week, I feel there is something you won’t or _can’t_ tell me. My dearest friend, please, let me help you.” When he glances down again, his papers are mangled by sweat-lined tremors.

“Robert, _my_ dearest friend, you have helped me. In numerous ways, you have.” Henry, with cadence steps, strides forward and gestures along to the honey lies. “Throughout this week, you have been more than understanding when you could easily abandon these studies. I am in debt to you.” Robert almost interjects that Henry has no reason to ever pay him back for anything he does voluntarily. “Which is why, in just three days, I should be able to explain. I promise, everything is completing itself. Now, what are these papers for?”

Without heed, Henry swipes all the papers crinkled yellow with sweat. His past melancholia is dissolved, flipping through them. Though Robert Lanyon is known to be the persuader in most conferences, Henry Jekyll sparkles with nectar rivers of soft coercion. Robert melts into the sap, the frantic notes of a bee’s wings moving his pulse, and cannot bring himself to mention the cursive name of enigmatic Edward Hyde he had seen not too long ago. 

“It’s the paperwork for our new donations. There is a wealthy widow - Eulalie White - who is interested in our biology fields. Over letters, she has requested our presence in South Essex and sent us two tickets for a round trip on the Metro. We are expected by tomorrow. I was just coming in so you could finish up with a few signatures. You do remember that I told you this last week, yes?”

Henry - who has no memory of that possible interaction - smiles, eyes full of pretend ease. “Of course I do, Robert.” In the space of his yellowing teeth lay a million dancing falsities.

†

To sweeping relief, everything had been successful. From the train, Jekyll and Lanyon emerged in London rain with signed forms totaling in a quality amount for The Society. As Lanyon opens up an ebony umbrella above them - the spider canopy matching stormy clouds - and chats about how wondrous their trip was, Jekyll cannot help his disappointment. 

In blended thoughts, Jekyll’s sentience remains a void fishbowl. And though he has tried to prove himself above it, worry drowns him. Underneath tangible bones, there are no rude remarks lurking about Robert, no sinister ideas about the mantel’s shotgun gleaming red above a fireplace, not even a monologue spoken by shark teeth. All he hears is the hum of oil oceans churning. It is so awfully lonely. As Jekyll bids goodbye to his travel companion and drapes his misty coat along a chair, he collapses soundless before a mirror. 

Enmity blossoms with thorns when Jekyll faces his reflection - _it’s all wrong_. Amber eyes scrutinize over the copying crystal with it’s pinching brows and wincing lips. All the light rays work correctly, a physic law that a year ago died for Jekyll. A hand touches his cheek; the same hand in the mirror rests upon his clone skin. Nostalgia rings out in tears. “Hyde?”

He waits, just staring off into the glass this hideous reflection lives in, desperately wanting it to be someone else. They are different, Jekyll knows and wants to believe. In their symbiotic relationship, they are two different coin sides that have yet to split apart the nickel. Two skeletons, he reminds himself and waits for the mirror to correct itself. 

Life passes by, the war-torn city passes by, and thunders of time begin to beat against The Society’s walls like soldier footsteps. Wiping away the pink scars from his eyes, Jekyll decides his hypothesis has all but drowned. He does not deserve to act like he knows Hyde. Then, with an euphoric finally, the mirror corrects with the motion that light moves through flickering water.

They do not meet each other’s eyes - Hyde, with hands Xed over his chest, stares at the wooden monolith and Jekyll blinks up at his bitter half in the elongated mirror. Fear settles in his concave chest like a bear curling into hibernation. Without warning, as Jekyll opens his mouth, Hyde blurts. “When?”

It is inscrutable to hide something from one’s self. History has birthed men who rewrite horrors into triumphs, showered by selfish delirium, but they cannot trick themselves. Henry Jekyll, who has a second skeleton, can never hide anything from Hyde. All their conversations boil down to truths. So, as he idles his forehead to glass and breathes purely for the first time in two days, Jekyll speaks. “Tomorrow.” 

A hand, squeezed between the palpable veils of mankind’s condition, reaches out and rests on Jekyll’s cheek. It is a blossoming comfort. 

_Hypothesis: space is nothing that can be filled by something - something becomes love._

†

Fingers moving cautiously, Henry Jekyll dots the remainder of glue on his last figurine. He, with a held breath, locks the last piece in place. Pale yellow glue foams up from the joint space, then dabbed away by a scabrous thumb. A smile touches Jekyll’s grim face. The pushed-up goggles tangling his mocha hair, he leans away from his completed model.

_You know, Henry, you are immensely dull._ The condensing voice does not dim the smile on the rogue scientist’s face. Instead, he smears pigment into his slacks and responds “There is my version of fun and then there is yours, Hyde.”

“That implies that we are different, Henry.” Edward Hyde has settled himself in the springline window once more. Next to him, a nebulous black outfit hangs off a coat-rack like a witch’s neck ensnared in a noose mouth. Jekyll, with a raw chunk of meat bandaged against his eye, had ironed it out for the night. It is a tiny benevolence, making Hyde grin as he watches Jekyll approach the cabinet. They are one in the same, in this symbiotic relationship, with the fair blonde as the parasite. Hyde is unaware that Jekyll does not share the same theory.

The monolith splits apart into the middle, unfurling twin doors open like wings. To them, the cabinet has always been a living being which exhaled wisps of chemicals. Their dual bodies invert like dollskin stretched inside out by bony nails. It breathes a new life with each creak. Even now, the pillar of space Jekyll steps into seems like a stark neck. As he is devoured and reaches into the stomach, Henry chuckles and replies “, But that is the truth, Hyde. I promise.”

Henry exits not with the standard red liquid. Clenched in his hands is a potion of violet hues. Edward’s face goes confused in mere blinks. “What is _that_?”

Henry, with a smile that has yet to dim a mere fraction, raises up the vial to the ivory gleam from his window as mauve light melts into the floorboards. With his rehearsed charm, he explains the outline of the past week and three days. 

“Edward, I haven’t been truthful to you. That alone is inscrutable to comprehend as we share thoughts, but my pills managed to fix that. I want to apologize for doing that to you, Hyde. I know we have a mutual agreement to my self-experiments but deliberately making you dormant in our subconscious was somewhat morally wrong.”

The epiphany pinches Hyde’s expression. Emerald eyes widen as he yells “, I knew it! It was all those pills’ fault. You thought you were being secretive but I knew something was fucking up my memories.” A satisfied grin emanates from his aided discovery before dropping into a frown. “So, why so? You aren’t planning to.” He cannot finish the thought.

“No, I just needed time to complete this.” The mauve hue goes black as Henry swirls it under moonlight. “Over the past week, I have been dealing with the theory that good and evil can be separated - my original thesis. But, I have expanded upon my old thesis: to what if good and evil can be physically split apart?” 

Hyde with prudent eyes watches as Henry uncorks the vial, seething between breaking the glass and listening to the explanation. His butterscotch hair is almost disheveled like the quills of a porcupine. The windowpane buzzes with voltaic caution.

“Edward Hyde,” and Hyde, guarded, hates how cloying his full name sounds on Jekyll’s tongue “long ago, I would have stated that we were the same side of a coin but it is untrue. As soon as you named yourself, told me confidently what you wanted to be addressed as, I knew you had your own separate identity. You - as any other person in the world - have depth to your personality. You are not the blatant identity of my evil; you are yourself - perfectly imperfect Edward Hyde. I’m sorry you had to wait so long to see it.”

“Henry, wait-”

“To us.” The vial empties.

†

Looking out from slits of sepia hair, he thinks the moon looks like a coin pressed finite against black skies. Snow white light huddles into empty shadows and glass. It melts in the void speckles of the monolith, stretches like cello strings on the desk surface, and kisses the tiny, hand-holding Jekyll and Hyde in London Underground.

Jekyll, with skin drenched in volatile sweat and a tremor shaking his single skeleton, brushes a few strands of yellow hair out of Hyde’s face.

Lips pull back, revealing pointed virgin teeth; “You are the stupidest man alive.”

_Hypothesis: you cannot separate love._

The evidence found in the way Henry cups Edward’s cheek and decoys him into a gentle kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> There aren’t any twinkies left. Stalk me on Tumblr? Username is paul-is-a-real-estate-novelist


End file.
